Animal Suffering, the Perfect Cocktail Conversation Starter?

We recently received what has to be the most unintentionally funny book ever: an enormous coffee table book on the topic of factory farming titledCAFO. The book is a follow-up to the all-text CAFO Reader, and is a lushly photographed horror show of bloody chickens, manure pits, penned-in pigs, and the like.

It was produced with funding from the Foundation for Deep Ecology, a California organization started by Douglas Tompkins, founder of Esprit and North Face, and is obviously intended to be displayed in one’s home for idle browsing. The way one might have, say, a Helmut Newton photography book lying around. However, its purpose is not entertainment.

“You only get so many opportunities to bring up the issue of factory farming with family and friends, so I feel you should have the best, most persuasive, most impactful material that you can, because many times you only get one chance,” says Erik Marcus, a vegan activist and writer for the book who posted a video review of it on Amazon.com.